


take the whole world with you when you go

by multicoloredgypsy



Category: The Hour
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, Nightmares, Post 2X06, Recovery, Spoilers, description of injury
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-29
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-11-22 21:13:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/614393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/multicoloredgypsy/pseuds/multicoloredgypsy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'I'm on the grass, you're screaming, and Lix has to pull you off my body because she's lived through a war already and knows how to face death better than you or I ever could.' (set after 2x06)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the song 'Clouds Clear' by Lamb. Not sure if I'll be continuing this, but we'll see. I'm not trying to bait anyone with the promise of more. I just don't know if I have anything else to write. Also, Mrs. Rochester is a reference to Jane Eyre.

It's been roughly six weeks since the paramedics scraped him off Lime Grove's front lawn (nearly two weeks spent unconscious, a little more than three weeks to find a reasonable balance between pain and his morphine drip, and then one more week spent trying not to die of boredom), and Freddie is finally getting discharged from the hospital.

Bel is there, doing that thing she does where she talks with the doctor and pretends that Freddie isn't in the room, let alone awake, alert, and listening to them as they discuss important subjects like options and payments, outcomes, full range of motion, rehabilitation... Freddie doesn't mind it too terribly, though. It's nice just to have company. Plus, listening to Bel talk over him like he isn't even there is much better than listening to her cry at his bedside when she thinks he's asleep.

Finally learning how to breathe around his broken ribs has given him a significant advantage over his visitors; on top of not feeling like his chest is going to split open anymore (as long as he lies perfectly still, that is), being in less pain meant that he was no longer moaning or whimpering on every exhale, and no longer giving himself away whenever he tried to be stealthy.

"Stop crying over me," he admonishes quietly, the last time he catches Bel in the act. "You'll wake the other inmates."

Bel composes herself quickly, an expert after just a few short weeks of study, wiping her eyes and nose on her sleeve and pausing to listen for any signs that any of Freddie's three roommates have been woken up as well.

"Your eye," she says, coming back to Freddie and changing the subject before he can address her crying. "It's open."

A feather-light touch follows, her fingertips ghosting oh so softly down the side of his face.

Freddie tests this new development out, blinking carefully. "So it is. Worth crying over, though?" Head injury and possible brain damage aside, Freddie won't be so easily distracted.

He hopes that pretending things are normal between them might just be enough to snap Bel out of this strange haunted expression that never quite leaves her face, the slump to her shoulders that Freddie's never seen before and doesn't much care for, this new tightness at the corners of her mouth.

But then, Freddie supposes that he's going to have to learn to shake his own ghost first. It follows Bel into his hospital room and stays with him long after she's gone. No, she'd screamed, over and over, and Freddie, and No, please, please, no, until her voice was raw. Freddie still hears her ragged hysterics even now, even after the danger has passed.

"So," he says, deciding not to push her just yet. "Tell me how you managed to sneak in here to weep over me. Or have they extended visiting hours?"

"Nobody stopped me coming in," she tells him. "Must have been the changing of the guard."

So much for not pushing her. But then, he has plenty of time to work on that.

* 

"Marnie wants to take me out to the country," Freddie says instead of hello, the night before he’s to be discharged. "So I guess this is goodbye."

"That should be good for you. Getting out of London. Sleeping in an actual bed instead of just a mattress on the floor. My god, Freddie, the way you live…"

The way he lives indeed. The way he doesn't get beaten to death in the back room of a Soho club. The way he wakes up in hospital with Bel crying over him... "Aren't you going to remind me about how I hate the country?"

"You liked it fine last year."

"I lied. Again."

"Nevertheless, you did say it, so I'm going to hold you to it."

"I said it, Moneypenny, _said_. I didn't vow it, didn’t swear it. Didn’t even...”

"Freddie."

He doesn't call her Moneypenny anymore, doesn't want to upset her. Apparently that's all he'd said when they found him on the lawn, just that one word, over and over. Freddie doesn't remember it, doesn't remember anything but Bel screaming, but he can imagine how horrific it would have been for her.

Plus, he also doesn't want to open the door for Bel to call him James. He doesn't feel very much like 007 in a hospital bed, unable to even think through his injuries without a morphine drip to dull the pain. James Bond would never have gotten caught.

But Freddie forgets things now. Sometimes Moneypenny sometimes just slips out, and he doesn't even realize that he's done something wrong until he sees it on Bel's face.

"Bel. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to."

"No, I know, I know," she says quietly, looking down at her hands. Nervous fingers twist at the ring on her left middle finger. It's just a thin band, but Freddie wants her to take it off all the same. He knows what it will feel like on impact, knows exactly the amount of damage it will do to an eye, a nose, a cheekbone…

But he doesn't push her, doesn't even bring it up because it would be absolute nonsense to mention this suddenly ridiculous _fear of rings_ of his, for god's sake, he might as well fear all hands, fists and shoes while he's at it. So he says nothing, waits in quiet penitentiary for Bel to compose herself, which she does heroically and without shedding a single tear.

"The country will be good for you," she says again. "It's very good of Marnie to offer."

"She didn't offer. She just decided it would be best and that was that. Although I fear she might not have thought this through. They'll have to drug me to the gills if I'm even going to survive the drive out."

"Freddie."

"Plus, they're going to have to lock me up in my own wing if ever they want a good night's sleep.”

"What are you talking about?"

"Some of my roommates have already complained. Apparently I shout in my sleep now. I don't remember what I've been dreaming about, but it's obviously not very pleasant. So I'm getting whisked away to the country, where they're going to lock me up like Mrs. Rochester."

"Don't you dare."

"I will try not to burn the house down, but I can't make any promises. You know what I'm like."

This earns him a small smile from Bel, a shy, reluctant little thing that doesn't want to come out in this place of illness and death. But despite Bel's best efforts, Freddie wins out in the end.

"So," he says, shamelessly tilting his head upwards. "Kiss me goodbye?"

The smile flees, and now Bel's got that haunted look on her face again. "I… I don't want to hurt you."

"Just don't punch me and I should be fine."

He won't push it, he decides, if she refuses. She's had a difficult time of it -- not that Freddie hasn't, but he at least had the benefit of sleeping through a good amount of it, while Bel had to sit and wait and suffer through it all. But he won't push this. He won't push Bel.

Good thing, then, that she decides to lean in, bracing herself with her arms on either side of him, and presses a soft little kiss against the corner of his mouth.

It's chaste, delicate, and oh so careful, and not at all what Freddie had meant. So he does the only sensible thing he can think of, and sits up, grabs onto Bel's face to keep from falling back down, and kisses her back. It's a proper kiss this time, nothing soft of careful about it, because that's never been his way with Bel.

And there he was, deciding not to push her…

Call it an exorcism, then, anything to to free her from the ghost that she's still so badly haunted by.

It hurts. Physically, hurts like hell. Never let it be said that an exorcism is a good idea. The pain forces all the air out of his lungs, his breath stuttering past his lips at the ugly grind of bone, that sharp stab of compound fractures. He deepens the kiss and hopes she doesn't notice.

She does, though, and breaks away soon after. “Go on, lie back,” she says, easing Freddie back down onto his bed. At least she doesn’t tell him to stop. At least she broke the kiss gently.

“You call that a kiss?” he says when he can breathe again.

“I’m only staying to make sure you haven’t just punctured your other lung, idiot.”

It’s another ghost, creeping out from the shadows - this time, it’s the ghost of the old Bel, the ghost of what they had _before_. It is the ghost of amicable silences and friendly jibes at one another, touching without consequence and sharing a bathroom.

They’d been stagnant then. The entire time Freddie and Bel have known each other, they’ve been standing still, until that afternoon in the dressing room. Freddie had given things between them a good push, and set it all in motion. He is more grateful to be alive for this than for anything else.

“Idiot,” he parrots, fondly. “You’ll never hurt me.”

But the moment has passed, the kiss has ended, and Freddie knows he won’t see Bel like this again for a while. Better enjoy what he has than push for more and risk losing it all.

“Don’t burn the house down,” Bel says, surprising him with one last kiss, shy and careful again because she still can’t bring herself to risk doing Freddie further injury. But she’ll come around.

This time, when Bel leaves, the ghost leaves with her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’ve just had a call from the hospital. Mr. Lyon’s awake.”

His hands are the same. His face is unrecognizable, but his hands are the same. There’s a small scrape on the back of his left hand and a paper cut on his right index finger.

Freddie still looks safe and whole and alive as long as Bel only looks at his hands.

But she can’t just stare at his hands, and so she wraps both of her hands around Freddie’s left, and if she holds his hand tight enough, she can almost pretend he’s squeezing hers back. But she can’t just think about his hands. 

Still, Bel can’t bring herself to do much else. Every time she looks up at the rest of him (face purple and black, swollen and misshapen and held together with bandages and wire, a mask over his face and a tube down his throat, his chest heaving as if the next breath might just be too much for him), her throat constricts and her stomach clenches and she can’t help but sob pathetically in a plastic chair.

Bel doesn't know how to do this, how to wait at someone's bedside. In his hospital room, she exists in a fractured state where she's never sure if she should be saying goodbye or trying to wake Freddie up, pinch him, shake him, touch his hair, touch his face, scream… Bel just sits mostly, and tells herself to be patient. She has to be patient not just for Freddie, but for herself, because this pathetic grieving widow was never on her list of what she wanted to be when she grew up.

She doesn't want to wake him, though, so she keeps quiet and still. He needs his sleep, he’s going to need a lot of sleep if he wants to start healing, never mind the fact that he’s been unconscious for two full days now and isn’t responding to any of the tests the doctors keep coming in at all hours to administer. Never mind all of it, the tubes in his veins and his skin practically translucent.

Never mind. His hands still look like him. He’s still Freddie, as long as she only looks at his hands.

-

“I didn’t know if I should wait or tell you now,” Sissy says, practically jogging to keep up as Bel strides down the hallway towards the studio. She’s just seen to Hector, in his dressing room; checked up on Isaac, who's actually going on air tonight; gone over the last-minute details. Braces herself for whatever news Sissy's chased her down the hallway to tell.

“I’ve just had a call from the hospital. Mr. Lyon’s awake.”

Hector not even wearing his tie yet. Isaac combind his hair in front of a mirror, repeating his lines under his breath. Lix and Randall waiting for her in the booth. The Hour going live in twenty minutes.

“Of course he is.”

She turns around.

-

It’s been fourteen days and I’ve counted every minute of them, she wants to say. It’s been fourteen days and I was terrified, she could have said. It’s been fourteen days and I can’t sleep can barely even breathe when I think about you not waking up. It’s been fourteen days and I hate you I hate you I hate you.

She has counted the hours, counted the second when she’s felt particularly defeated. She has been terrified, she’s been devastated, she’s cried in her office, in the toilet, in taxis and in her own flat. She’s cried just looking at her yellow lamp, which she never turns on anymore so people won't see her face as well, makeup smudged from all the crying. In fourteen days she’s spent more hours awake in bed than she has sleeping in it, smoked more cigarettes and drank more vodka than she and Freddie could have gone through in a month. And she hates him, has hated him for making her feel this way, just sweeping into her life and getting tangled up in her heart and making it _hurt_ when they are pulled apart.

"It’s been fourteen days,” she begins, but can't finish.

She even goes as far as to sound irritated about the fact. But seeing him there, eyes open and blinking back up at her, is supposed to mean that everything has gone back to normal now, and that Bel doesn’t have to sit up all night wondering if Freddie would ever wake up because he has already (and if things truly were normal, Freddie keeping Bel waiting even fourteen minutes would have iritated her).

“Shouldn’t you be at the broadcast?”

“Yes, I should,” she says, with no intention of going anywhere.

She takes his hand in hers and right away he’s squeezing back.

Freddie’s voice is sandpaper but he asks her about Cilenti, asks her about Kiki and El Paradis and Hector's interview.

Bel knows her own voice will betray her the moment she opens her mouth, her heart already lodged in her throat, so she just says "you're safe," and takes his hand in hers, even though that's not the answer he was looking for. 

"Bel," he says, anxiously fidgeting with the ring on her left hand. Bel just squeezes tighter.

"You've kept me waiting two weeks now," she says. "The least you… the least you can do…"

She presses her lips together and breathes through her nose to keep from crying, squeezes Freddie's hand and her eyes shut and just breathes in and out, deep breaths, just breathe…

She's cried in Freddie's hospital room before, but never with an audience until now. She hangs her head and covers her face and sobs with Freddie tickling the inside of her wrist.

-

His hands are fine, but that's about it. Bel can hold them, and he'll even reach for her when she's there, but he shudders and flinches away from anything else. His bruises are all but faded, with only some yellow swelling still remaining, but he's still a long way from being alright.

He frowns at the ring on her left hand, rapidly twisting it around her middle finger. Bel doesn't pull away because this is the only time she can touch him. Everything else either frightens or hurts him, and she doesn't want to push him.

"Moneypenny," he calls her when he forgets, when he slips, and it hurts her like Freddie must have been hurt. Every time, it takes her back to that night on the front lawn of Lime Grove. She was hysterical, reduced to a pathetic screaming thing at the sight of him, twisted and bloody and left in the grass as a warning for the rest of them. 

_We're both wearing red tonight,_ she'd thought then.

Now she would never wear red again if it could mean forgetting that night. Because Freddie survived. He didn't die on the lawn, and so that night on the lawn didn't matter. But Moneypenny always brings her back, and Bel doesn't think she's ever going to be able to hear it without her throat closing up and tears springing to her eyes as if Freddie wasn't right in front of her, alive and whole and breathing.

"Moneypenny," he'd said, over and over.

-

"I didn't mean it," he says out of the blue, bundled up under two extra blankets, teeth chattering and his bandages soaked with sweat. "What I said before. Didn't mean it."

He's said a lot of things tonight, all of which Bel is certain he doesn't mean. "It's alright," she says, trying to keep him calm.

Freddie hunches deeper in on himself, continuing bitterly. "Kissing you. Telling you, you were possible. I needed a diversion, so you practically dropped one into my lap."

Bel catches his hands in hers to stop their anxious fidgeting. Freddie immediately reverts to twisting the ring around Bel's left middle finger, round and round and round.

"I was lying. I lied to you," he says gravely, delirious, eyes bright and struggling to focus. "I never do that, I shouldn't."

"It doesn't matter, Freddie. It's alright."

"I lied. I lied, and I'm sorry." He shudders, exhaling harshly, his jaw working. It's just an infection, the doctors assure her, nothing to worry about once his fever breaks, but even the fact that they've seen hundreds of patients through this before doesn't comfort Bel in the slightest.

One of his blankets is slipping. Bel reaches up to fix it, and Freddie goes back to wringing his hands.

"Alright, Lady Macbeth, calm down," Bel says, taking his hands up in hers again because she can't touch him anywhere else, and she just wants him to stop. Everything. Stop talking, stop shaking, stop fidgeting, stop being so sick and weak and fragile, and so unlike the Freddie she remembers.

The nonsense he's talking now doesn't inspire confidence either. He'd kissed her and left - of course the kiss had been a distraction, but that isn't to say he didn't mean it.

Of course he meant it. He wouldn't let Bel touch him at all if he hadn't meant it.

It makes sense, and so Bel believes it. And Freddie's alive, so Bel is supposed to be happy. She is happy. She's supposed to feel it. She feels… disappointed.

This broken man in the bed used to be hers, always there, tenacious, fearless, ridiculous and wonderful. Now he's just alive, and one would hardly even think it to see him like this.

Bel refuses to talk about him when she's at work, knowing she will be met with pity at every turn, small frowns and sad eyes. This is nothing to pity, Bel wants to say, wants to stand in the middle of the room and shout; Freddie is alive. He didn't die, he made it back to us!

But he didn't make it back.

"I lied to you," Freddie says, over and over.

*

She's lying in bed, trying to will her body to sleep, when her phone rings. It sends a shock down her spine, all her nerve endings alight with the kind of anxiety that only comes to those who have someone close to them in a hospital.

"Hello?"

"Oh good," Freddie says. "You're home."

"What are you doing awake?" she asks, even though she knows he's been staying up later and sleeping through more of the day lately. The more pertinent question would be 'how are you even calling me right now?' Freddie on the phone would have had to first get out of bed, which he has been adamantly refusing to do this whole time, ashamed of having to be in a wheelchair, most likely.

"Wasn't sure if you'd still be out celebrating the broadcast. Good show…" _Moneypenny_. Even when he doesn't say it, it's there. Bel hears it in Freddie's voice, in the way he stops himself by physically closing his mouth to keep the name from slipping out. The sentence truly suffers from the loss of it, and even though Bel still can't bear to hear it, she still misses it.

It's all ruined now, though. She can't even read James Bond anymore. She'd read Casino Royale out loud in Freddie's hospital room, that first day. She'd run home to get it, naively thinking it would help, then read through the entire book. Freddie didn't wake up, not for fourteen days, so Bel gave the book to Lix to hide somewhere to keep her from tearing out all of the pages and shredding them into confetti.

But Freddie hasn't said it. It's been a week since he's woken up, and he's been careful. He knows how badly it still hurts her. Perhaps it hurts him too, although he hardly needs more injuries right now.

"Nice to see Mr. Wengrow getting some air time."

"Isaac's eager to help where he can. Everyone misses you."

"Not that Hector needs the company, though," Freddie continues, ignoring her. "Even with me gone, there's hardly any need for small, desperate boys on a news broadcast."

"You're not gone. I know exactly where you are," she says. "And you're not desperate."

"Whatever you say," _Moneypenny..._

With the phone in her hands and Freddie's voice in her ear, and despite the gaping absence of _Moneypenny_ , Bel can pretend that things really have gone back to normal. She shuts her eyes and allows herself to forget that night on the lawn, forget the blood and the screaming, the two weeks and then another. All of it fades away, and she's just come home from drinks at the studio after the broadcast. She and Freddie have shared a cab, and he's called her the minute he gets back to his flat.

This is nice, and Bel can pretend.

Operating vaguely under the fantasy that they'll be sharing another cab back to the office the following day, she says, "See you tomorrow?"

"I'll be waiting," he replies, and she remembers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to be continued, I suppose.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It all comes down to Marnie and Bel in the end, and between the two of them only one had recently been sacked from their television show and suddenly found herself with an overabundance of free time to use to dote on injured journalists.

Freddie doesn't like the wheelchair. He'd left the hospital in it, but also with encouragement from his doctors that he should do as much walking as he can, considering how much time he'd spent in bed. 

He likes Marnie, though. Marnie's fun, even if her attitude has seemed rather forced. She'd been close with Commander Stern as well, apparently, and is still trying to work through that shock. Also, having to drive two hours out of London, with Freddie bundled up in the passenger's seat, carefully trying to avoid every bump in the road, is probably not helping her feel too at ease either. 

Try as she might, the country road proves too bumpy to traverse even remotely smoothly, and Freddie makes her pull over on three separate occasions so he can just sit still for a minute and wait for his body to stop despising him.

He couldn't go home. This much had been decided shortly after he'd woken up and dispelled everyone's fears that he was going to die. No one thinks his Notting Hill flat is safe, least of all Freddie himself -- not that he'll admit it out loud, though. He hides it well, insisting that he'll be fine at home, that he doesn't need a proper bed, and then once more that he'll be fine. Nobody seems to believe him, though. Which is fair.

It all came down to Marnie and Bel in the end. Between the two of them only one had recently been sacked from their television show and suddenly found herself with an overabundance of free time to spend doting on injured journalists, and between a two hour drive to the country and the four flights of stairs leading up to Bel's apartment, the decision pretty much makes itself.

She'd been to visit him in the hospital a few times. Freddie was actually quite impressed with how well she was able to pretend that she wasn't in equal parts horrified and sympathetic. But she'd recovered her wits with easy, breathing it all out of her in a quick exhale and replacing her initial shock with her best smile. "Mr. Lyon, you look remarkably well. I can't imagine why they're still keeping you here."

"That would have to do with my inability to actually move without blacking out from pain. Funny, you'd think I'd nearly been beaten to death going by the state I'm in."

The fact that Marnie forced a laugh at Freddie's feeble attempt at a joke only endeared her to him further.

*

"I think I’d like to walk in,” Freddie announces as Marnie pulls up as close as she can to the front door of her family's estate.

She doesn't seem to like this, and quickly gets out of the car. "Don't get up," she says, obviously pretending not to have heard him. "I'm only just getting your wheelchair." For the sake of how long he's going to be staying, though, Freddie plans on breaking her of this habit of treating him like glass as quickly as he can.

"Just let me put my arm around you," he says, opening the car door and swinging his legs out slowly. "It'll be slow going, but I am going to need help."

"I would feel more comfortable if you took the wheelchair."

"As would I," he says. "But I'm not going to get any better sitting on my arse."

"We'll take it slow then," Marnie says, carefully helping him to his feet.

Freddie doesn't say anything else after that. All he can do to keep from groaning is press his lips together, breathe through his nose and clutch at Marnie's shoulder when he trips.

"Almost there," Marnie says in that falsely optimistic chirp she'd done so well on television. "Almost there, Freddie."

Freddie saying that he would be slow going proved to be the greatest understatement. Every shuffling step is agony, his muscles aren’t ready for actual work after their six week holiday, and his broken ribs prevent him from taking a deep enough breath to sustain him. Marnie ends up depositing him into the first chair they get to, sweating and trembling and breathing harshly.

"Do you want me to get the…?"

"No, it's fine. Just let me rest."

"Alright. Wait here then. I'll just go fetch your things."

He looks around the hall, ancestors staring down at him from paintings that lined the walls. It suddenly hits Freddie how different the circumstances were during his previous trip to the country; he hadn't even noticed the paintings last time. He'd spent every second watching Bel.

This time, Freddie settles into a small bedroom on the main floor, not having it in him to climb the grand staircase and never going to have it in him to deign for someone to carry him. He suspects the room used to be part of the old servant's quarters, and tries very hard not to resent this. It's not easy though, (especially considering all the free time he has on his hands to allocate to things like bitterness, frustration, and the trusty resentment).

This time, as an injured party, all Freddie's expected to do during his stay is sleep, nap, eat, try not to cringe or say something rude when Marnie offers to help him in the bathroom, spend the next half hour struggling alone in the bathroom because he actually did need, and should have accepted, the help, lie about the new scrapes and bruises on him when he emerges ("I've got plenty of scrapes and bruises; you're not saying you can tell them apart, are you?") and then sleep a bit more.

"I really am sorry about the room," Marnie says, lingering in the doorway after helping him into bed. She's been apologizing since before they'd arrived, and to be honest, Freddie is still a little too medicated to be bothered (the only way to get him through two hours of bumping about in a car). "It hadn't even occurred to me that the stairs were going to be a problem."

"I've a very long list of problems, Mrs. Madden, none of them architectural. I'll be fine."

"Perhaps you'd feel a little less uncomfortable about this whole scenario if you called me Marnie," she suggests bluntly, composing herself before she continues. "I don't want to push you. I just want you to be comfortable."

It's certainly a strange dynamic, Marnie welcoming her husband's one-time lover's no-time love into her family's estate like a wounded war hero. It's not the first time Freddie's been kept in style for his own safety, though. It could be much worse.

"I'm sure I'll be fine," Freddie says. "Marnie."

She'd told him to stay as long as he needed after that, but after four days Freddie found it hard to imagine needing to stay much longer, nearly dead of boredom as he was. There were only so many games of 'go fish' one could play before one's mind began to go.

*

Friday night, he calls Bel at eleven to ask after the broadcast, which he's furious about having slept through. When she answers on the second ring, Freddie says: “Nice, quick response time. I reckon you still feel like every phone call is going to be bad news."

"And how right you are," she snaps back.

Legitimately concerned that Bel might get irritated and hang up on him, Freddie jumps right to the point: "I slept through The Hour."

"It wasn't that boring, was it?" She doesn't sound terribly concerned.

"No," he says, full-on furious already. "I was sleeping. Marnie didn't wake me. I missed the whole bloody thing."

"Well, do try to find it in your black heart to forgive her, because she's being monumentally patient and generous letting you stay with her in the first place, and I'd hate for you to get kicked out before Hector and I arrive tomorrow. We're driving out in the morning. Surprise..."

Freddie notices that this conversation lacks the normal anxiety of he and Bel's previous interactions. The ghost is gone, probably not very good with the telephone.

"Anyway, what are you doing up so late?"

"I slept all day, and well into the evening, apparently.” He wants to ask her about the broadcast, but he's been out the world for so long he wouldn't even know where to start.

"Sleep some more. Keep sleeping until you're better," she tells him. Freddie can hear the sound of her lighter, and he takes a long deep breath through his nose in an effort to smell the long-missed cigarette through the phone. The stabbing pain in his chest that follows reminds him that he's an idiot.

"That's not quite how it works," he says. "Are you really coming?"

"Tomorrow morning."

"Good," Freddie says, closing his eyes and waiting for the pain to subside. "That's good. Just like old times. Shall I go out back and shoot something for tomorrow's supper? I'll be sure to give you and Hector plenty of privacy."

After a pause, Bel says quietly, "I can't tell if you're deliberately being rude or if you're just damaged from having your head bashed in."

Freddie can't tell either. Aside from napping and sleeping and Go Fish-ing and eating and hurting and sweating and keeping quiet, Freddie's spent a great deal of time waiting. He knows he'd been taken some significant damage, and he's been assured and reassured over and over again that he would heal, but that it would also take time. Freddie's conceded to take time, as he would very much like to recover and go back to being himself.

The time it's taking, though, is not giving him much confidence. 

"Freddie?"

"Now I almost wish you wouldn't come," he says quietly.

"Do you?" Her voice sounds strange. Freddie notices the change right away. He knows he's not been himself lately, and he hates how much it clearly upsets her, but now that he’s already started he knows it’s going to be impossible to stop.

"I'm just going to keep saying horrible things to you that I can't help saying, and you'll be miserable and I'll hate myself and you'll have driven out here for nothing." In spite of being in the throes of this strange and still curiously new spiral into depression, Freddie is aware that he's just going to get worse. The only solution he can think of is to hang up the phone and not pick up when Bel calls back just a few seconds later.

Hot tears spring to his eyes, which is also new and very unlike him, but Freddie's awareness does nothing to stop his body from so unfortunately betraying him thus. His chest is still wrapped up tight in bandages to keep from breathing too deeply, but with every wet, pathetic gasp it feels like he's being stabbed with knives that had been specially sharpened for the occasion. All he can do is lie there and blink up at the blurry ceiling, and pray that Bel will still come for him in the morning.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their intimacy had always been of the intellectual variety, a spiritual compatibility that never quite made it into the physical world.

Two months worth of every newspaper Bel could get her hands on had stacked up neatly behind her sofa when she'd brought them home one, two and three at a time, but they are an absolute disaster to get into Hector's car. Bel's hands are stained completely black with ink before she's brought even half of the collection downstairs. 

"Freddie's going to appreciate it," Hector reminds her, probably speaking more out of concern for her sanity than from wanting to see the job through.

"Right. Because I'm sure organizing two months worth of every newspaper available to us is exactly what he wants to do during his recovery."

In spite of her effort to keep all the stacks of papers in order, it all goes to hell once they start driving. The first turn sends the lot shifting over to one side, and then they all tumble to the floor as Hector carefully slows to a stop.

She tries very hard not to think about what Freddie had said the night before. _Now I almost wish you wouldn't come._ She knows he hadn't meant it, he couldn't have meant it. If he actually felt that way he would never be able to admit it. After all the years they've known and loved each other and never said anything about it, Bel would know this better than anyone.

The city gradually gives way to the country, and the papers in the back seat continue to shift into an increasingly frustrating mess on the floor that Bel will not feel even slightly bad for leaving for Freddie to sort out by himself. Hector mostly keeps quiet, paying attention to the roads and giving Bel time to collect herself. As they pull up to the front of the house that is much too large to be called a house (but Bel can't find it in her to call it an ESTATE, of all things), she says a quick "thank you."

"Don't mention it," Hector says, and so she doesn't.

 

*

 

"Miss Rowley, so good of you to come," Marnie says, voice bright but eyes narrow as she clasps Bel's hands like an old friend might, leaning in to kiss her on the cheek. "Freddie's just in the sitting room. Down the hall, on your right."

She obviously has no intention of showing her the way, brushing past her to latch on to Hector. It was as if Bel had suddenly become irrelevant now that the initial greeting was out of the way. Bel didn't mind, leaving the Maddens to catch up with each other in private in favor of seeing Freddie.

She finds him propped up on an ungodly amount of cushions, half asleep with his head resting on his hand. His whole face lights up when the sound of her footsteps rouses him, and he sits up so quickly it makes him wince.

"Hi there," he says, his mouth stretching into a warm, wide grin in spite of it.

'Hi," she says back, sitting down carefully so as not to offset Freddie's position on the cushions.

Once the initial hellos and smiling at each other are out of the way, Freddie seems content to just stare at her for the moment, still grinning as he reaches a hand, palm up, across the cushions. Bel puts her hand in his, but can't stop thinking about what he'd had said the night before. She doesn't take it to heart, what with him smiling at her like a lovesick puppy across a sea of fluffy cushions being more than enough to convince her that he really does want her there.

But now she worries about the sort of mindset Freddie must be in, out of action, still recovering, and having no idea if or when he'll ever be back to his old self. In the past, he'd been honest with her about everything but his feelings. Now that he's not holding anything back, Bel can't help but wonder why.

It makes her sad to think about, but she can't stop. Instead of mentioning it, or even just asking Freddie how he feels, she blurts out instead: "There's two months backlog of newspapers in Hector's car that I don't know how I'm going to bring inside."

Freddie's rubs his thumb across the back of her hand, and if Bel just focuses on this she can almost forget about how scared she'd been since last night's phone call.

"That's alright," he says quietly, his smile relaxing into a picture of something a little more sane looking. "You'll think of something."

"You look much better," she says, only to keep from asking if he was alright and what he was thinking the night before when he said what he'd said on the telephone. He really doesn't look so different than when she'd seen him last: tired, too skinny, still haunted. Ugly scars. This fragile sort of weakness she will never get used to seeing.

"Doesn't he?" Marnie calls as she walks into the room. "I assure you, he's getting lots of rest!"

Freddie grabs onto Bel's hand just as she makes to pull her hand away. He's caught her. Bel smiles, although she suspects it does little to make her look any less miserable than she feels.

"Yes, lots of rest. There's actually nothing else to do here anyway," Freddie says, his tone dry.

Bel squeezes his hand in a congratulatory sort of impulse that she immediately regrets afterwards. Who the hell is she to reward him for sarcasm like one would give treats to a dog for doing a trick?

But he sounded like himself again, and that's all Bel wants, really. Aside from wanting Freddie to not be in pain, for him to have never been beaten, for him to have never gone to meet with Kiki by himself. For her to have never let him…

"Is she actually being nice to you?" Bel whispers once Marnie's out of earshot. "Her kindness seemed rather forced. I have half a mind to take you back to London with me."

"Please, god, no, not another car ride. Not yet. Marnie doesn't like that you drove in with Hector, that's all."

"Would it have been better if I'd left Hector behind?" She asks, knowing full well that what would have been better is if she hadn't come at all. She is not going to mention the affair, though. She downright refuses to. It's in the past and not worth thinking about, especially not with Freddie alive and breathing right beside her on the sofa. "She's had me over before. That party she and Hector threw. She should be past this by now. I am."

"That was a party. There were plenty of other guests, and she ignored you the whole night."

"She spent the whole night mooning over Camille, you mean."

"Yes," Freddie says quietly. "That she did."

"Freddie," Bel says, because she sees the look of hurt flash cross his face, and he twists his hand out of hers and repositions it primly on his lap.

"My advice would be to not mention anything to Marnie," he says. "No sad, belated apologies. No groveling, no trying to convince her that it really is over. She already knows that."

Bel knows better than to push this, not when Freddie had so blatantly ignored Bel's accidental mentioning of Camille. "When have you ever known me to grovel?" she says instead, not wanting to push.

"Just leave her be," Freddie says, "and spend all your time here with me."

"Alright," she concedes.

"And kiss me hello. I've been waiting."

Bel is instantly horrified at the fact that Freddie would have to remind her to kiss him in the first place, but in truth, they've never done this before. They've been polite, cheek-kisses and jibes and elbows and little looks behind other peoples' backs, but never intimate, honest-to-god kisss hello. Their intimacy had always been of the intellectual variety, a spiritual compatibility that never quite made it into the physical world.

Fearing that she'll worry Freddie if she spends any more time considering this, she leans across the sofa and just kisses him, not missing the way Freddie all but sighs with relief into her mouth, and how he wraps a hand around the back of her head to remind her that this is more than just a quick friendly peck. This is personal, and intimate, and so very new.

It's nice. His lips fit nicely against hers. She finds she quite enjoys his hand on the back of her head, when she'd never liked being held down or controlled before. She likes the smell of him, the taste of him on her lips, on her tongue, the little sounds he makes.

 _Good_ , she thinks when it's over, when neither of them pull back so much as they both unanimously feel pleased enough to leave it be for now, because this has just further confirmed what she'd already been sure of: _This is right. We work, he and I. We fit._

Judging by the slightly dazed and very happy look on Freddie's face, Bel knows he would agree.

 

*

 

Bel doesn't look at her watch even once, because it would be rude and she doesn't want Freddie to think her impatient, but she doesn't need to count how long it takes her to help Freddie climb the stairs to know that it takes them a very, very long time to get from the ground floor to the bedrooms. The sun is already starting to set as she helps Freddie climb into bed when it's all over, the sky alight with bright reds and purples and gold.

"Do you want to be alone?"

From where he'd already curled up on his side under the blanket, Freddie shakes his head and says "stay." So Bel walks around and sits on the other side of the bed. She takes care not to move around too much, not wanting to disturb him as she arranges herself to sit against the headboard.

This had been her room when she'd stayed here last, yellow wallpaper and ornate furniture and a large, comfortable bed (bigger than the one in Freddie's room, and softer, which he'd told her as he jumped up and down on it like a child). They'd lain in bed the same way, too, Bel on the left, Freddie slinking in late at night and curling up on the right with his crossword and his Brightstone and badly concealed frustration at being in the country. He'd left the party early, and she could see how uncomfortable and unhappy he was in this place of wealth and privilege.

Now Freddie is exhausted, his body all but useless from injury and nearly two months of inactivity. He lies still as the grave, breathing harshly through his nose, his eyes shut tight against what Bel suspects is an incredible amount of pain. Bel wishes she hadn't indulged him in this urge of his, this idea that he could make it up the stairs so he could sleep in a real bedroom. It was too soon, he was still too weak… she never should have agreed, let alone offered to help him.

She hadn't had time to regret it during the actual climbing of the stairs - she'd been much too preoccupied with keeping Freddie from tripping or collapsing to entertain a single thought about anything else. Now that they're resting, though, she can't think of anything but.

She reaches across the bed without thinking and buries her fingers in his hair, rubbing slow circles and swirls across his scalp. She does it purely out of selfishness, wanting assurance that Freddie was still with her. Even lying in the same bed as him, she still needs to be reminded. She still can't look at him without seeing him on the lawn, chest heaving, _Moneypenny_ on his lips and blood everywhere else. So she closes her eyes and just touches him, 

Freddie's low, contented sigh brings Bel back into herself. She opens her eyes and holds her hand still, afraid to continue. Freddie's exhausted, he'd never let her touch him before, he always flinched away and looked terrified and stricken and hissed at the pain of human contact on his still-healing body, all she could ever do was hold his hands. But that sigh, and the fact that the lines of tension on Freddie's face (between his eyebrows, in the corners of his mouth and eyes) have already smoothed out, has Bel afraid of what would happen if she didn't continue her gentle scalp-stroking that instant.

So she goes back to rubbing his head, playing with his hair, tickling his forehead, and doesn't stop until the sound of Freddie's rough breathing evens out into the soft exhales of sleep.

Still breathing. Still alive. Still hers.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "'Star Journalist Beaten and Left to Die.' Well, that's not a very good headline."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This part was a bit longer than the others, as there was a lot I wanted to address in Freddie's POV before switching back over to Bel. Bad news about the cancellation, though. :(

Freddie wakes to find the room bathed in moonlight. It's a beautiful sight. More beautiful, though, is the sight in bed just beside him: Bel, asleep on top of the covers, sitting up against the headboard with her shoes still on.

There's a coppery taste in his mouth, and when he reaches up to touch the source of pain on his bottom lip his fingers come away bloody. He doesn't remember the dream he had, but since there's only one major trauma going on in his life at the moment, he hardly has to wonder what it could have been about.

He licks his bottom lip, then takes it into his mouth and sucks on it, rubbing his tongue across the wound until it stings. Bel's hands are at her sides, palms up, her pale fingers curling inward. Freddie pretends not to notice the fact that there are no rings on her fingers, because that would just be ridiculous.

The clock on the nightstand says 3:18. In the moonlight, the yellow room looks blue, as if they were underwater. There's not a sound to be heard, save for Bel's light snores, the faint ticking of said nightstand clock, and the creak of the bedsprings when Freddie shifts to get a better look at Bel.

Her mouth is open, lips parted, chest rising and falling as she breathes in and out. They've slept together before: head to foot in Bel's small bed, her head on his shoulder on the sofa in Freddie's father's flat, early morning in a cab after a long night of celebrating. They've slept together many times, intimate and close, yet always like chaste siblings.

He'd always wanted to touch her, less like a brother and more like a lover. After she'd rejected him, laughing his proposal off as a joke, Freddie convinced himself that it was just a joke, convinced himself that he would lose her for good if he kept on. For the sake of their friendship, which was truly something to fight for, Freddie managed to get past in, despite his wounded pride.

But she did love him, and he knew it, and not just like a brother. She loved him like they meant so much more to each other than just siblings who loved each other unconditionally, or just two strangers who didn't even love each other at all, and like she'd only just realized.

The way things are now, with the two of them in bed together and Bel too afraid to touch him and Freddie too badly injured to really touch her, is worse than it's ever been. Because now he won't lose her if he tries. There is love between them and they both know it, and all Freddie wants is to wrap Bel in his arms and kiss the ghost off her face for good. But he can't. Physically, can't do anything but lie there pathetically and look at her while she sleeps.

He knows that there will be time for that in the future, knows he's not going to be an invalid forever, feels confident enough that he may yet recover, that he'll take Bel out dancing again, get drunk and laugh with her hand in his, spinning her across the floor. One day, he will. One night.

But not this night, and not for any nights in the near future.

Bel stirs beside him, her brow furrowing as she mutters something unintelligible. Her breathing speeds up, becomes more shallow as she continues to mumble words that sounds almost like No, Freddie, Please, God, and then these soft, breathy whimpers that break Freddie's heart.

Snapping out of his initial shock at watching this unfold, Freddie reaches across the bed and takes hold of Bel's shoulder, shaking her gently.

"Bel," he says sharply. "Wake up. It's just a dream. Wake up!"

Her eyes snap open already wet with unshed tears. She reaches up to brush them away before they can fall, blinking up at her surroundings before her eyes find Freddie's.

"It was just a dream," he immediately assures her, reaching up to stroke her cheek.

She lets out a long exhale, looking uncertain. "Yes, it was." Her smile is small and looks more like she's about to cry. She doesn't just yet, doing a spectacular job at composing herself, as always.

From her sad smile, and the way she can't bring herself to look away from him, Freddie knows exactly what she'd been dreaming about. It instantly humiliates and infuriates him. "I don't want you to see me like that," he says, the _that_ having no business here, _that_ being him beaten and left on the lawn for Bel to find. "That's not me anymore. I'm alright now."

Bel squeezes her eyes shut, her lips trembling. "You're not," she says wetly, and now she does cry, her shoulders shaking, her mouth shut tight to hold back her sobs.

Freddie hates this.

It hurts him terribly to sit up but he doesn't give a damn, shifting closer to Bel and sitting back against the headboard, coaxing her closer and closer until he's cradling her against his chest, stroking her hair back from her face. "Yes, I'm alright," he says. "I swear it, Bel. I'm here. I'm alright."

And he is. Sure, he's probably never going to be in front of a camera again, but he has Bel, and it bears repeating: he has Bel, and Bel has him, and to hell with anything else because this is all he's ever actually wanted.

He won't feel this way later. He knows he's going to lose control after the scars on his face do all the fading and healing they're ever going to do, the way his crooked nose and broken cheek never fully heal and make his face less symmetrical than ever, the way people are always going to startle at how hideous he's always going to look. He knows he's not going to be happy because there is still so much he wants to accomplish that he probably never will, now. There is still so much that he believes in.

But as long as he has Bel, he knows he'll be alright.

"You wouldn't want to go out to Hector's car and bring in some of those papers you brought me, would you?" he asks, later, when Bel's stopped crying, exhausted and raw.

Her face is hidden from him, but he feels the way her mouth shifts into a smile from where she's leaning on him. "Not unless you allow me the satisfaction of dragging you down the stairs and out into the cold with me," she says.

Freddie drums his fingers on her arm. "Fair enough."

This, he rather likes, Bel teasing him, Bel smiling, Bel touching him, Bel…

 

*

 

With the morning comes new aches and pains as well as the old ones, and a sharp pain behind his eyes. Bel's gone, but his pills have been arranged neatly on the nightstand, along with a glass of water. He slowly works his way upright, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and letting his body acclimate to not being horizontal. When the waves dizziness subside, he reaches for his pills and the water, swallowing the former and drinking all of the latter…

After which he promptly lies back against his pillow. After all, he won't get far trying to walk anywhere on his own, and there's no need to exhaust himself before he's been awake for even a full five minutes.

"Out of bed," Bel boldly announces as she walks into the room. "I'm giving you a bath."

His face aches where his left eyebrow rises up on its own volition. "Are you?"

"You don't smell terribly fresh, and Marnie's already told me you won't let her help you in the bathroom. And you've been here a week already. You think I couldn't tell how rank you are from the way my nose was mashed up against your chest last night?"

She's wearing those trousers of hers - probably the only pair she owns - with the high waist that makes her look impossibly slim. Freddie appreciates those trousers, even though this outfit of hers is clearly her "work" clothes (the hard labor sort of work, the kind of work that involves dragging wounded journalists out of bed and holding them up as they shuffle and stumble weakly around a grand estate). But, all the same, he appreciates them, along with the fact that she's once again teasing him rather than weeping over him, so he concedes and lets her help him to his feet, down the hall, out of his pajamas and into the tub, which she'd already filled with hot water for him.

It hurts for the first few seconds, too hot and feeling like his skin is going to melt off, but the feeling passes quickly enough. After that, everything feels perfect and amazing and his whole body relaxes and he probably would have drowned if Bel wasn't there to hold onto him.

"You're my hero," he murmurs lazily, blinking up at Bel's face hovering upside-down above him.

"Shut your eyes," she says, dipping a glass into the water and pouring it over his face. His eyes are still closed when he feels the press of her lips against his, upside-down and tasting like toothpaste.

"And you haven't brushed your teeth yet either," she says when his eyes drift open. Not even that can dampen his spirits, though. Bel had kissed him just then, she hadn't been forced or implored or coerced or even corned in a dressing room after Freddie had assured her that she was, in fact, possible. 

He tilts his chin up, craning his neck towards Bel until she gets the hint and comes in for another kiss. "Good thing you don't seem to mind," he says when she pulls away, in spite of what must be his godawful morning breath. And while Freddie's not had so many experiences where he gets to wake up with a beautiful woman, he knows that morning kisses are a thing that actually happens, that two people really can love each other enough that they just want to kiss each other in spite of each other's terrible breaths. And, lo and behold, here it was, happening to him. Who'd have thought?

 

*

 

After his bath (which is nice) comes Bel re-wrapping Freddie's chest the way she'd learned to do in the hospital (painful and unpleasant), followed by the humiliating trek downstairs (nowhere near as nice as the bath), after which Freddie finds that all the newspapers Bel had brought for him had migrated into the study, neat stacks taking up a significant amount of floor space.

"There's no rhyme or reason to any of this," she admits, helping him into an excessively plush armchair. "The papers shifted all out of order on the drive up. I'll help you sort through it so you won't need to do anything but sit and read."

"I think I can manage that much," Freddie says, just staring in awe at Bel's work. "This must have taken you hours..."

Bel is already flipping through one of the stacks. "And two months. Would have taken longer to organize them, but, like I said… Oh! Here it is." She pulls one paper out from the middle of the stack she had been perusing, leans over and drops it into Freddie's lap. "From the day after you…"

Were attacked. Were nearly killed. Became a hero. Made a fool out of yourself. Any of the above would do. Regardless, Freddie's hands are perfectly steady as he arranges the newspaper and skims the front page.

"Let's see," he mutters. "Ah. 'Star Journalist Beaten and Left to Die.' Well, that's not a very good headline."

"Star journalist, though. Thought you might like that."

"They couldn't even bother to use my name?'

"Nobody would have recognized it anyway," Bel teases him with obvious fondness in her voice. "But you made the front page."

"Barely," Freddie mutters, scanning the rest of the abbreviated article. Beaten, left on the grass in front of Lime Grove, nothing known about his attackers but the police are working on it… A footnote recites that the article continues on a further page, but Freddie has no interest in turning to it, suddenly finding the room too hot, stifling. He quickly turns the page, needing to read about something else, anything else...

"She didn't want to take my name, you know. Camille." As soon as the words leave his mouth, he regrets saying them. It's as if they'd flown out of his mouth on their own volition, some impulse that his brain saw fit to let fly without first consulting him about the matter. But then, he sees the way Bel bites down onto her bottom lip, and he comes to the realization that she won't know how to respond to such a sore topic just as quickly as his initial realization that he had gone too far. So he decides to keep talking in an effort to steer the conversation back into familiar territory. "It was something about alliteration, or something about independence. Camille Lyon. Say it in French and it sounds like 'chameleon.' You'd have the same problem with your name, if that's the sort of thing you care about. The alliteration, not the reptile."

Now he really has gone too far, knows he's pushed Bel into an uncomfortable corner, but he can't seem to stop himself talking. His mouth is just about the only thing that's regained its full range of dexterity since he left the hospital, and so he just carries on talking. "You looked positively scandalized yesterday, when you accidentally mentioned her name in conversation. I take is that means you haven't been able to get in touch with her."

Bel doesn't look up from the newspaper in her lap when she replies. "I've tried everything short of going off to France myself. I didn't want to leave in case…"

"In case I died."

"In case you woke up," Bel says. Her quick retort does little to calm Freddie's growing agitation, though, and he makes a frustrated sound with his tongue.

"That's alright," he says, tone dry. "I was just curious. I doubt she'd want to know about this anyway."

"I always thought she would come back. Were you both really on such bad terms when she left?"

This hurts just as badly as any of Freddie's physical wounds, like an unexpected fist slammed into his gut, the crack of his nose breaking against Cilenti's knuckles, the sharp stab of trying to breathe with a punctured lung and broken ribs and the punches still coming. "It was bad enough that she did leave, of course. But I don't think she hates me badly enough to wish this sort of thing on me. Or maybe she does. I don't know. Actually… no, she'd probably have come back out of guilt if she knew I'd nearly been killed. But then I wouldn't want her to come back that way."

"But you'd still want her to come back?"

"I didn't say that."

"You said you wouldn't want her to come back out of guilt. That implies-"

"I don't want her coming back here, Bel," Freddie shouts, his voice echoing in the cavernous space. "I don't want her to-"

"For god's sake!" Bel cuts him off with a shout just as loud as his. "You _are_ still married to her!"

And just like before, the venom slips past Freddie's lips before he can do anything to stop it: "I don't see why that would be a problem for you."

Bel swiftly rises to her feet and leaves the study without another word.

Freddie wants to shred the paper that he's still holding, just keep ripping at it until every word about him is as well and truly annihilated as he nearly was himself. But he can't seem to find it in him to move even one finger, just sits there clutching the paper as it flutters in his finely shaking hands.

 

*

He isn't surprised when Marnie walks in shortly after. She's carrying a tray of food, which she sets down on the table beside the armchair Freddie had been left in. Freddie's voice sounds like that of a sullen child even to his own ears when he asks her: "Come to see that I'm alright, then?"

"No," Marnie says calmly, her smile never faltering. "Just bringing you some breakfast."

"Thank you," Freddie says, managing not to sound completely miserable. "But I'm not very hungry at the moment."

Marnie sits down on the footrest, but stays turned away from Freddie so that he can only see her profile.

"Hector had bad dreams, you know. After the war."

"I'm sure he did," Freddie concedes, finding it impossible to maintain his anger with Marnie here, after all the kindness she's showed him thusfar. "I can't imagine anyone coming out of that sort of thing with their sanity as it was before, unless they weren't right in the head to begin with. That must not have been very pleasant for you."

"No, it wasn't. He'd wake up shouting and thrashing about, thinking he was back there. I would have to calm him down, let him hear my voice. I had to be so collected, even though I was probably more terrified than he was.

"Marnie," Freddie warns, feeling the anxiety starting to creep back. "If you're trying to make me talk about it…" Fortunately, Marnie doesn't let him finish that sentence. She turns around in her seat to face him, stops him dead in his tracks.

"Since I first met you, I have never known you keep quiet when you had a mind to say something. I trust that when you're ready to talk, you will. Like I said, I was just bringing you some breakfast."

Freddie scrubs a hand over his face, feeling his cheeks flush. "I really am hopeless, aren't I?"

He hears some familiar sounds, then looks up from his hand just in time to see Marnie light the end of a cigarette, held between her lips. She takes a long, deep breath before plucking the cigarette from her lips with her thumb and index finger and extending it to Freddie, gesturing to the newspaper in his lap. "What are you reading?" 

"Saturday's paper," Freddie says, careful not to snatch too desperately at the proffered cigarette. "The saturday after my…"

"Ah, yes." If there's one thing Freddie loved most about Marnie, it would be her innate ability to cut him off before he started talking about things that weren't worth mentioning. "Star journalist, was it?"

If only Bel was as good at this particular skill as Marnie was.

"Beaten and left to die, yes." With that, he takes his first drag of smoke in over two months, and closes his eyes to fully enjoy the moment.

The smoke tickles his throat and makes him cough, which sends him into spasms of pain. He smiles sheepishly at Marnie once he's recovered, half expecting her to scold him and take the cigarette away from him. She just smiles back, then hides her mouth behind her hand for laughing at his misfortune.

He takes another drag, careful this time, before handing the cigarette back to Marnie.

"Thank you," he says, his voice rough.

"Don't mention it," Marnie says. "You're a hero now. You should be rewarded as such."

Freddie shakes his head. "I still don't understand it. They don't much like the ambitious, the aristos. They don't care for the low born or anyone who tries to climb higher than the lot they'd been given. But they sure do love a good hero, and throw every other opinion they've ever had out the window at every petty little sacrifice a person can make."

"That they do," Marnie agrees, reaching over to tap the cigarette into an ashtray.

"And I'm not even a real hero," he continues. "I'm just an example, really: how not to be a journalist."

Marnie gasps, feigning offense. "Not a hero? Well then you must return to London at once. I can't have a mere example under my roof. The neighbors will talk."

"You don't have neighbors for miles."

"Well then thank god for that," she says, her smile warm and genuine. "It seems you're safe here after all."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to be continued...


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'I'm on the grass, you're screaming, and Lix has to pull you off my body because she's lived through a war already and knows how to face death better than you or I ever could.'

Bel finds Hector passing through the dining room, obviously being on his way to look for Marnie. "We should probably start back soon," she says, because she refuses to admit what she's really feeling right now, transparent as she knows her feeble cover would be to anyone with half a brain. "I just have a lot to get through tomorrow morning, and I expect you in bright and early as well. Can't have you getting to bed too late tonight."

He raises an eyebrow, but doesn't push her any farther. "I can pack up and be ready in half an hour. Let me just find Marnie."

"Thank you," she says, and she means it. She can't stay here right now, not with Freddie like this, cruel and unrelenting like he always is, she should have known better. "I think she's with Freddie," she adds before running off to the bedroom to pack her things like a coward.

She does, in spite of the horrible thing he'd said to her, go back to say goodbye to Freddie, who hasn't moved from the armchair in the study that she'd left him in, although there are obvious signs that Marnie has been helping him, fetching him newspapers, piling them up all around him. He's practically buried in them, fingers black with ink, his shirtsleeves smeared with it from where he'd rolled them up to his elbows.

"Still mad at me, I take it," he says, not missing a beat. He's folded down the top of the paper in his hands so she can only see his eyes, dark and quizzical.

"Yes," she says from the doorway. "I'm happy to see you're doing so well. Take care."

"Please call when you get home. So I know you got back safely."

"Hector's a fine driver, Freddie," she says dismissively. "You know that."

She doesn't move any closer and she doesn't utter another word until Hector and she have driven nearly halfway back to London.

*

She doesn't forget Freddie's request when she gets home, that he'd asked her to call to let him know she's safe. The thought doesn't slip her mind; quite the opposite, it's not until her traitorous arm is reaching for the phone that she realizes what she's doing, and veers off towards the kitchen instead.

It's incredibly petty, she knows, oh she knows. She can barely even imagine how much Freddie must hate being so hopelessly disconnected from the world, knows how comforted he would have been by her call. But in spite of the fact that she is a decent human being, Freddie is still infuriating, and the last thing she wants is to give him the satisfaction of winning when he'd gone too far this time.

(The fact that he didn't even apologize when she'd gone to say goodbye to him only made it worse.)

She kicks off her shoes, puts on her nightgown, pours herself a generous glass of merlot, and goes to bed.

Hours later, the ringing phone in her living room startles her awake.

"What," she snaps into the receiver, not needing to ask who in their right mind would be calling her at nearly one in the morning.

"Did you get home safe?" Freddie says.

"I'm alive to answer my phone, aren't I?"

"Of course. But since you went through all the trouble of getting out of bed and picking up the phone, I figured it would be bad form to just hang up on you."

"Is that all?"

"Well, you did just confirm what I'd spent all night worrying about, so thank you very much. I wouldn't mind an apology, if you're wondering. But, no, this is all that I need, really."

"An apology. From me."

"It would be nice," Freddie says.

"You're not even going to apologize for waking me?"

"I wasn't planning on it, no."

She tries not to shout at him, and it takes nearly all her willpower to keep her voice even. "How about for what you said to me this morning?"

"I said a lot of things to you this morning. I hardly can remember all of them."

"You know exactly what I'm talking about," she hisses. "Married men, Freddie! How dare you."

"I was being honest," he says, his voice going high and breathy like it does whenever he gets defensive (when he knows he did the wrong thing in spite of being right).

"Save it for the office. Go to sleep," she adds, still feeling protective of him, even if he is being deliberately insufferable. 

*

Thursday afternoon, with a pre-recorded interview that isn't going to film itself, finds Bel alone in the studio, exchanging confused glances with the camera operators (as well as their clueless interviewee) as to where the rest of her staff might be.

She finds them in the newsroom, all gathered together at the table in the center. Any scolding she might have authoritatively tried to give them dies on her lips when she sees that Freddie is seated among them, having forgone his pajamas in favor of actual clothes and grinning so hard that Bel almost forgets that anything had ever happened to him at all, that he was never anything but perfectly whole and healthy and alive.

"What's going on?" She says, because she's their producer, and they have a show to produce, and she can't just join them in being happy that Freddie is there (which she certainly is, but god forbid she lets it show). She'd have appreciated some warning from Marnie, though, at the very least.

"I just thought I'd drop in and see that everyone's working hard," Freddie says, and there's something oddly forced about his smile. It makes Bel feel like there's something he's not telling her. 

"They're not," Bel says, meeting Hector's eyes, and god, not a one of them looks even the least bit embarrassed. "Hector. Studio. Now."

"Mr. Lyon was just asking after the program," Sissy says. "I reckon he's been away so long, he hardly knows what the news is anymore."

She tries not to wince in sympathy as Freddie rises to his feet, his face contracting with pain before he can recover the smile again. "Is it alright if I join you?"

"Very well," Bel says, going over to touch him, a quick hand on his shoulder, because it feels strange not to at least acknowledge him being there. "It'll probably get everyone working again, so you might as well stay."

"I'm sorry," Freddie says quietly.

"For disrupting my workday? Or...?"

But Freddie doesn't answer. Instead, he reaches an arm towards Lix, who wraps a hand around his waist to help him walk, even though he hardly needs it. As the room clears out, Bel notices Marnie standing in the doorway of her office.

"Miss. Rowley," she says, fidgeting with her gloves. "I'm so sorry didn't call…"

She seems vaguely distraught; it sets Bel immediately on edge. "What happened?"

"I drove Freddie home today, but he wouldn't get out of the car. Made me drive around the block four times before I decided that I'd tortured the poor man enough. I hope this is alright, I didn't know where else to go."

"No, it's alright. You were right to bring him here."

Of course she takes him home with her that night. She figures he must be ashamed, or at the very least embarrassed, and so she doesn't talk about it. Just tells him when she's ready to leave, and brings him home to hers.

It takes ages to get him up the stairs, but he knew full well that she lived on the top floor before deciding not to get out of Marnie's car. By the time they make it to her flat, Freddie's exhausted and about to collapse, so she helps him into her bed, then shuts the door behind him, and spends the rest of her night watching the television on mute so as not to disturb him.

*

At first she thinks she's dreaming, with the anguished cries from the next room permeating first into her subconscious, and then shocking her into the wakeful understanding that it's Freddie, in her bedroom, having a nightmare.

She all but sprints into her room, where Freddie is twisted in her sheets and crying out wordlessly.

She shouts his name and reaches down to shake him awake. Freddie nearly leaps out of his skin when she touches him, then thrashes out against her, his elbow catching her in the face before his breath stutters and his eyes fly open.

"You were dreaming," Bel says, seeing stars from the blow, slowly becoming aware (due to increasing pain) that he'd hit her right in the inside corner of her eye, but it doesn't matter right now. "Freddie…"

He looks wild, feral, haunted by whatever he had seen. She reaches for him again, but he jerks away from her.

"I'm fine," he blurts out, his voice hoarse and very small. He clearly doesn't want her to touch him, and so she sits down on the edge of the bed with her hands in her lap. He covers his face with his hands and mutters, "I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine…"

Her eye is throbbing when he finally says something that isn't a meaningless and entirely un-assuring assurance of his wellbeing:

"I wasn't dreaming about Cilenti." His hands are still covering his face, muffling his voice. "Sometimes I do, but mostly I just dream that I've died, and that I'm watching you afterwards. I'm on the grass, you're screaming, and Lix has to pull you off my body because she's lived through a war already and knows how to face death better than you or I ever could. I know it's a bit vain, egotistical, but what makes it so frightening is that I'm completely powerless. Even with Cilenti, I could have… I tried to fight back, tried to run, I tried. But with this… there's nothing I can do to stop you from mourning. And I'm watching you cry, watching you fall apart, watching you fade away, and as hard as I try to reach you, there's nothing I can do… that's what I'm afraid off."

She thinks he might be crying, his hands still covering his face, his chest hitching and betraying the calmness he's able to maintain in his voice. Her first impulse is to comfort him, to put her hands on him and tell him that he doesn't have to worry about her. But, god… there isn't anything she can say. There is nothing she could say, absolutely nothing, that would ease this fear, because she's still afraid herself.

She's still traumatized, of course she is. She held his lifeless hand, pale as the hospital sheets he'd been wrapped in; she had his blood under her fingernails; she screamed herself hoarse on the lawn in front of Lime Grove, and anything she wants to say to ease his fear would be a lie, and they both would know it.

"Move over," is what she says, helping Freddie shift to one side of her narrow bed so she can lie down beside him. Even on her side, she's practically falling off the edge, and holds on to the sleeve of Freddie's shirt.

"I need a bigger bed," she says, remembering how easy it was in the country, when she and Freddie could hold each other close or spread out flat and still have plenty of room.

"You need a bigger flat," he corrects her, and he's removed his hands from his face, bringing his arms back under the covers. She can just barely see tear tracks down his cheeks, wants to wipe them away but doesn't dare touch him just yet. "Successful producer at the BBC. You shouldn't have to live like this."

"You have a bigger flat," she points out, then says carefully: 'Would you like me to come stay with you at yours?"

"You need a bigger bed," Freddie agrees, deliberately avoiding having to talk about his own flat.

Bel knows that this is not the right time to try to get Freddie to talk about how scared he is to go home. Before his bruises had faded, many of them had been the exact size and shape of his neighbors' fists. The terror of this is not lost on Bel, she herself would be afraid to go home. Surely, she's going to have to think of something. As much as she wants Freddie to stay with her, as much as she doesn't trust him to manage on his own just yet, they're going to have to think of something.

But for now, she's alright with just lying with him, her face pressed into the crook of his neck and her body pressed against his. She does need a bigger bed, but she certainly doesn't mind this cramped closeness.

Later, when all is quiet, Freddie presses his lips to her eye, where he'd hit her. Beneath the covers, Freddie's hand finds hers, and holds on tight.


End file.
